EarthBound: The Perfect Metaphor for Leaving Childhood

EarthBound remains one of the most influential games to what I would dub a “counter culture” within gaming. It somehow balances the line between being a parody and being heartfelt with endless skill. As a diehard fan of 90’s JRPGs, it’s pretty funny to note the aspects of those games that EarthBound is spoofing. For example, in most JRPGs you hit some silly roadblock which incentivizes the player to backtrack and find a solution to said roadblock. These games try their hardest to contextualize why the roadblock exists. Maybe a merchants wagon collapsed on a bridge and you can’t move forward. Well, in EarthBound, there are these strange pencil-shaped statues that block the road. There’s absolutely no reason why they exist. The game acknowledges the absurdity of it. And really, what’s the difference between a merchants wagon and a pencil-shaped statue?

I remember being ready to explode with excitement when I found out EarthBound was coming to the Wii U eShop. As a huge Nintendo fan, I kept hearing about this elusive game that was seemingly ignored by Nintendo with the exception of Smash Bros. And finally they brought it back! I tried it out and….I really didn’t like it.

I was too young and inexperienced with JRPGs to really understand what EarthBound was doing. To any aspiring JRPG fans out there, I highly recommend NOT starting out with the biggest titles in the genre. Don’t start with FF6/FF7, Chrono Trigger or the Mother series. I’d recommend starting out with some high quality titles that don’t always claim the throne as “the best”. Something like Grandia, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy 4, or a Dragon Quest title. After having two or three of those under your belt, you kinda start to understand the flow and tropes of the genre. And you either love them or hate them. Or adore them, like me.

Mother 1 set the precedent of being a spoof of modern RPGs. Most specifically Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest was the most popular of its genre at the time, and Mother 1 was a peculiar look in the mirror. It also was able to balance its humor with a level of emotion and self-awareness. Every now and then the game reminds you that you’re playing as a group of children. It’s not like Pokémon, where ten-year-olds just explore the world with no worries or repercussions.

But, as was the case with many Super Nintendo titles, the sequel to Mother 1 basically said “let’s try that again”. And thus we have EarthBound.

I think there’s a rawness in the first two Mother titles not seen in many games. When you play a game like Final Fantasy VII, everything from the character portraits in the menus, to Nobou Uematsu’s score is trying to weave together a narrative and overall feeling. With EarthBound, I’m not convinced that the team was ever trying to “immerse” me. It feels more like the game is trying to address me as a player and person who enjoys games as art. It feels like a hodgepodge of influences and ideas. A great example of this is the music. Every now and then, you get these jazzy tracks that are catchy. Then you’ll get these upbeat almost pop-like tracks. And randomly you get these horrifying otherworldly tunes (that hilariously sample The Beach Boys).

EarthBound overall is much like its OST- it is unpredictable. In many ways, that’s much like life. There were many times in my life I woke up in the morning and expected a normal day, but was surprised with either a fantastic or awful one. There is a point in a game where you finish a boss battle and head back to a village. When you get to the village, a random NPC offers you a cup of coffee. If you say yes to the coffee, you are greeted with a three minute scene where the game breaks the fourth wall. There is a slow text scroll. Somebody is speaking to the protagonist Ness, and congratulating him on coming so far in his journey. It’s unknown if the voice is supposed to be the creator of the game, Shigesato Itoi, or somebody from within the game. There’s a soft and encouraging track playing in the background. It’s one of the most memorable scenes in the game for me, and it’s totally missable. This might be blasphemous to my fellow JRPGs addicts, but a scene like this hits harder than the opera scene in Final Fantasy VI. Again, one game is trying to immerse me and the other is trying to address me.

The game does this a lot actually. It forces you to stop and remember that you’re just a person in a chair playing a video game. There’s a moment when you need a password for a locked door, but the password requires you to not move for three minutes. This gives you three minutes of a “back to reality” moment in the middle of your gaming session. Some people may hate this approach, but I absolutely love it (mostly). There could be some times where this “stop and smell the roses” approach is perceived as tediousness. There’s multiple instances of your party using vehicles like a bus, van, and a flying machine to travel. Instead of just fading to black and loading in the next area, the game would rather have you watch the entire journey of your vehicle. It’s cute the first time, but feels a little redundant by the third or fourth.

EarthBound isn’t trying to immerse you, but it also isn’t trying to keep you on your toes. It just does what it wants to do. And I think that’s where people might get the wrong impression from fans that EarthBound strives to be “quirky” or “unique”. When you read up on Shigesato Itoi, it becomes clear that the man just made what was in his head. You don’t see these same “quirkiness” allegations pointed at somebody like Hideo Kojima.

Itoi strikes me as a man who isn’t absolutely smitten with video games. He’s only been involved with seven games. One of the seven never even saw the light of day. I think this “outsider” nature is how he was able to bring a foreign charm to his games still copied today by the likes of Undertale and LISA. This game isn’t some near-perfect masterpiece such as A Link to the Past or Super Mario World. There’s clear flaws like the imbalanced difficulty in the beginning of the game. This strangely difficult beginning seems to be a clear contradiction to Itoi claiming his team strove to make a game “for people who don’t play games”. There’s also a lackluster inventory system, and a seemingly useless bicycle. There’s a part of me that wants to claim these little issues as the humanity we often see in art. The little flaws. But I won’t lie, there were some instances when these issues really bugged me.

The game has a similar unique charm as the popular manga Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. When I read Jojo, I never know what will be on the next page. And that humorous curiosity always makes me laugh with joy. When I played EarthBound for the first time, I never knew what the next town would be ailed by. One town would be suffering a zombie invasion while the next was taken over by a religious cult. It’s extremely unpredictable, especially for its time. Some of that charm was diminished by my second playthrough, but I still enjoyed it.

But as I said before, despite being a near parody of JRPGs, EarthBound has a lot of heart. You are tasked with travelling to eight “Your Sanctuary” locations. Why they’re called “Your Sanctuary” and not simply “Sanctuaries” I will never know. When you get to one of these locations, you are greeted by a very sweet song and text box. Usually Ness will remember a tender moment from his childhood. Or he’ll simply smell the scent of his favorite home cooked meal. The theme of homesickness and growing up are prevalent in this game. Whenever I got to one of these “Your Sanctuary” locations and heard that warm song, it felt more rewarding than finishing a dungeon in A Link to the Past.

I haven’t even mentioned Giygas yet, the primary antagonist. People have written easily hundreds of essays on Giygas. He’s an awesome example of early cosmic horror in video games. But Giygas is never really a character. “He” always came off more as a metaphor or simply a goal. I like to think that Giygas is a metaphor for the evil and unfairness constantly present in the world. And Ness and his children friends are preparing to meet that evil as they soon leave childhood.

The second half of the game shines much more brightly than the first half. You spend the first four to five hours with just Ness in your party. It’s similar to the very first Dragon Quest. This means the game can be unnecessarily difficult. But once you get a full roster of four party members and some revival/fast travel spells- you’re good to go.

The last two or so hours of EarthBound really hit deep for me. The party enters a location that doesn’t accept living beings; so they must transfer their spirit into robot bodies. There plays this horrifying and draining song that leaves no room for joyous playing. Alongside the song are the metallic clanks of your footsteps. I can’t help but wonder if this robotic section is a metaphor for being an adult. As we are near the end of the game, much time has passed. These kids will one day no longer be kids. They will be forced into jobs they may or may not enjoy. As somebody who works a job I feel little to no passion for, I often feel like I should “mechanize” myself. If I could simply be a robot with no feelings or dreams or desires, perhaps I could serve my purpose more bountifully than my human form.

There’s a hopelessness to such a realization. And then we reach the final boss.

The final battle is quite literally spirit versus evil. The secondary antagonist Porky Minch says it himself: Giygas isn’t an evil being, Giygas IS evil itself. And even though the final battle is quite easy, I think it might be my favorite final battle in gaming history. I love that the final battle actually isn’t solved by violence. It’s solved by prayer. I’m not a religious person per se; I like to believe in some level of spirituality. But man, what a beautiful way to send off this strange little RPG.

When you return home at the end of your journey, you can call your father one last time. He says Ness “sounds different” and mentions that his birthday is next week. Ness is growing up. The whaffs of nostalgia he experiences at the Your Sanctuaries are nothing be memories. Time keeps marching. There is a cruelty to the world that many parents choose to shielf their children from. And we’ve learned that the only thing that can possibly counter this evil in this world is faith. Whether you want to put that faith into a god, or simply into the potential of tomorrow- is up to you.